


Laws

by bulletincookie



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Hurt and comfort, M/M, References to Depression, it helped me though so maybe itll help someone else idk, it was not edited much since it was written, kind of mostly a projection fic, so it is definitely skewed to pity one side, this was written as a way to cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 12:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20174536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulletincookie/pseuds/bulletincookie
Summary: Ever since he was young, Portugal has hated compromises. But maybe he can make an exception for his lover.





	Laws

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! So I won't spoil too much, but I will warn that some actions of the characters may seem ooc. I tried to go back and edit a bit to make their actions seem a bit more true to character while keeping the original message. I'll explain more in the end notes.
> 
> João - Portugal  
Claude - Luxembourg

If João could pass his own laws in another country, it would be required for Claude to never have to work any more. Or even just to have one day off per week. Just one. One day that João could come over and hang out with him freely, and chat and joke with him. One day where he wouldn’t get brushed off with a “not today” or “I have too much work right now”. How did Claude seem to always have work to do anyways?

Hell, not even a full day. Just an afternoon. A couple of hours where he could sit down and have an actual conversation instead of just a couple of passing texts of good mornings and good nights. Those were only on days that João was lucky. He had turned off the sound for all other texts or calls from anyone except Claude, because he got sick of getting excited at his phone going off only to find it a message from England complaining about something again.

Finally it all seemed to break.

“Oh, Claude mentioned you the other day!” Belgium had said.

João instantly perked up, but then furrowed his brow. “You were talking with Claude?”

“Yeah, I go over for lunch with him and Abel on the weekends! He was saying how—”

The rest of what Belgium said didn’t even register in his head. It was all tuned out by white noise. So Claude did have time? He had to, didn’t he? He was talking with Belgium and Netherlands. But then again, what was João to those two?

“I need to go,” João interrupted. The chair gave a horrible screech as it scraped across the floor from João standing up so quickly.

“So soon?”

“I…I just have to go. Somewhere. Somewhere else.” It was hard to not spit that out. This was Belgium, he couldn’t be mad at her. It wasn’t her fault that Claude…No, João didn’t even want to think about it. Surely there was a reason. A perfectly good reason. Claude was a rational person, so surely there was a perfectly good, rational reason that he refused all of João’s attempts at conversation while having lunch with Belgium and Netherlands and who knew who else! Was Claude bored of him? Was being around João too much for him?  
  
João finally determined that the perfectly rational reason was at the bottom of one of the bottles of alcohol in his cabinet.

The wine tasted bitter in his mouth. He felt nauseous. The whiskey tasted salty, or perhaps those were his own tears. No, he wasn’t crying over this. He was an adult, no, a centuries old country. He was not crying over this like some heartbroken child. The whiskey was just salty.

João looked at the whiskey blearily. When did he get this? Christmas, wasn’t it? Yes, Scotland had given him it and said it was a good bottle to share on a cold night with a wink sent at him and Claude.

He took another swig. It tasted even more salty now.

——

João lost track of how much he drank, but he knew by the splitting headache he had the next morning that it was too much. The dinging tone that kept coming from his phone felt like a jackhammer in his head. He groaned and fished it out of his pocket to throw at the wall. From the thud that it made that seemed to resonate and echo in João’s skull, it barely made it past the couch.

It somehow seemed to do the trick though, because the ringing stopped. João sighed in relief and let his head flop back down, about to go back to sleep, only for the phone to start ringing again. For some reason, it felt even more piercing. He grabbed it and tried to crack his puffy eyes open to see who was bothering him so early in the morning, but everything spun when his sight tried to focus. He closed his eyes again as he answered and held the phone a foot from his ear.

“Mmfh…what?” he croaked out. It hurt to talk, his throat felt like sandpaper.

“João? Are you alright?” Claude’s smooth voice came from the other side. It was like an oasis to the desert in João’s throat. His headache somehow didn’t hurt as much.

“Yeah. Had a rough night. Why are you calling so early?”

“João, it’s three in the afternoon.”

“…” João had to squint at his phone to confirm it. He could hardly believe it himself. He had started drinking…when did he start drinking? He groaned as he tried

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah. So what do you want?”

“I have been trying to call all morning and afternoon. I have a birthday gift for you.”

“Birthday?”

“Yes, don’t tell me you’re so sick that you forgot it was your birthday.”

Right, that was what he was meeting up with Belgium with yesterday. And then… another wave of nausea overcame João.

“João?” Claude asked, clearly worried.

“I’m fine.” He had no reason to be upset. That was the perfectly rational reason he found at the bottom of… He grabbed a random bottle from the floor beside the couch and squinted at it. At the bottom of some Jack Daniel’s? Ugh, why did he even have that shit in his cabinet?

“You don’t sound fine.”

“Well I am. So go back to work.”

“I took the afternoon off. That’s why I’ve been trying to call you.”

“So? Go spend it with Belgium or Ned,” João spat out. He would regret that later, but for now his head hurt too much and all he could think about was

“Why would I? It’s your birthday, and, er..I’m already outside. Your hair is sticking up, by the way.”

“What.” João struggled and sat up to squint at the window, only to see Claude bending over to peek into his house.

Claude smiled and gave a small wave. “Hello~.” Claude’s lips moved a millisecond before his voice came through the phone. “Can you let me in please? I am worried the chocolates will melt in my car.”

The thought of sweets right now sickened João, but not as much as the realization of the several bottles of different types of alcohol that were strewn across the floor, and one that was shattered against the wall. João was surprised that his headache wasn’t worse at this point.

“Yeah, uh..Give me a minute to clean up. There’s…a little bit of a mess in here.”

“I can see that. Did you celebrate your birthday early?”

“…Yeah.”

“And without me? I’m hurt.”

João turned to look at Claude, who was giving a small pout at him through the window. He gripped his phone tighter, but his hand was still shaking. “Of course it was without you, every time I’ve asked you to hang out you’ve turned me down, but then you go and have lunch with Netherlands and Belgium and— and—” João hiccuped. No, he was not crying over this. He was mature. He was not crying over his best friend spending time with other people. That was childish and disrespectful and selfish and—

He hardly registered the sound of the back door sliding open, but he finally realized it when he felt two warm arms around him. He turned his head and buried his face in Claude’s chest.

“João, is that what this is about?” Claude murmured, brushing his fingers over João’s tangled hair.

João hiccuped and managed a small nod.

“I’m sorry, but you know I can’t control my work schedule. I need to be working all the time to keep my country in top shape.”

“I— I know,” João muttered, wrapping his arms around Claude tight. “But— Belgium and— and Ned—”

“Live close to me and come over for my thirty minutes for lunch,” Claude interrupted gently. “If you lived closer, I promise you that you would be invited as well.”

Of course that’s why. João fell silent

After what seemed like forever, Claude broke the silence. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Don’t drink?” João muttered. “I think I might be way ahead of you on that. I don’t want to look at any alcohol.”

“Well, that.” Claude paused and looked at the bottles strewn about with a grimace. “But also..I think you should go see a therapist. Remember how much it helped you deal with your nightmares?”

“I guess.”

“I think you should go see her routinely again. You cannot keep bottling this all up.”

“Watch me.”

“João, I am saying this as your friend and lover. I do not want to see you like this.”

“You hardly see me anyways.”

Claude fell silent. “…You know, friendship and love mean different things to different people.”

“What the hell does that have to do with this?”

“Do you want to know what friendship means to me?”

João gave a noncommital grunt and shuffled to get comfortable against him. “Sure, whatever.”

“To me, a friend is someone that I can talk to whenever I am free, and we will be able to pick back up right where we left off, no matter how long it has been since we last spoke. A friend is someone that is patient, and does not try to distract my work. And…I would like to hold my lover to the same standard as my friend.”

João heaved a deep sigh and rested his cheek against Claude’s shoulder to speak. “To me, a friend..a friend is someone who talks with me frequently. Who I can talk to about anything, no matter how mundane. But you..you get annoyed when I send you pictures of flowers I find on walks or when I tell you about a sale I found.”

“Because that interrupts my work. I have to keep my phone on, in case of an emergency. But when it’s going off so much because you’re texting me, I could get in trouble.”

“You could at least respond to my texts at the end of the day.”

“I’m sorry. I read your messages and then I forget to respond. Or sometimes I’m too drained after work to read through all of them.”

“I bet you don’t have trouble reading back through Bel and—”

“Stop it.”

João drew away, surprised at the harsh tone from Claude. He fell silent, not sure what to say.

Claude’s furrowed brow and light frown softened a bit at João’s surprise. “João. They’re the closest people to my heart. I have known them my entire life. I don’t respond to them sometimes either, just like you. But they don’t throw tantrums and get drunk, because they know me. I thought you would know me too.”

“I do know you!” João defended.

“Then you should know that I can’t always respond to every thing you send.”

“…Can you at least try to talk to me more?”

Claude’s face softened into a light smile. “I think we can find somewhere in the middle of our own definitions of friendship that can work for both of us. For now, go take a shower. You smell horrid.”

João managed a shaky laugh. “In a minute.” With that, he flopped back onto Claude and wrapped his arms around him. He tried to rest his head on Claude’s shoulder, only to find that his shirt was soaked. “Ah, your shirt..”

“I’ll wash it here.” Claude gently patted João’s back. “I never said you would have to shower alone, after all,” he teased, and João couldn’t help but snicker at the smile he could practically hear in Claude’s tone.

“Alright, it’s a deal.”

Maybe making a law to get his way and only his way wasn’t always the right choice for everyone. It may not have even been the right choice for João. He liked to listen to Claude talk about his work, to coax some small bits of gossip from him at what was happening between this coworker and that coworker. If Claude never worked anymore, João would never again be able to see him light up with pride at everything he had accomplished lately. And if he saw Claude routinely every week, well that would get boring wouldn’t it? They would surely run out of things to talk about. Or perhaps they wouldn’t, but he wouldn’t treasure the chances he got to hang out as much. He just needed to change his perspective.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, leave a comment and/or kudos if you enjoyed it.
> 
> Now, about this fic. This is going to be kind of long because I have a lot to explain. I was struggling with extreme depression and loneliness about a few months ago. I was isolated in a completely different country, I was homesick, it felt like I only had about three friends that I truly could talk to about anything. And I'm not going to lie, I went batshit crazy for a while. I had too much time on my hands, and it felt to me like my friends should have had the same amount of time as me, but they were ignoring me because they hated me. It resulted in a very harmful cycle of doubt and accusation, along with extreme obsession and jealousy. It was not healthy for me or my friends. 
> 
> I sought out counseling through the university at first, in which the counselor seemed to inadvertently encourage my sabotaging of my own friendships, because I was telling her what I thought to be true. My friends were snippy at me, they ignored me, they excluded me from things, they probably made fun of me behind my back, etc. She suggested I cut these friends out. And I tried. But it felt even worse, because they were my friends. Some small part of me still desperately wanted to be friends. It felt like the more I tried, the more they pulled away. And that was the case! Because I was being a complete selfish ass that couldn't understand that my friends were ridiculously busy with their own lives and had way too much time on their plate to be online every day. 
> 
> I finally came to the above realization once I got back home about two months ago, got on some antidepressant medication, and listened in on a close family member talking to one of her friends. There was a sentence that stuck with me: "Different people have different definitions for friendship." It made me realize that was what my friends had been trying to tell me this entire time. Not that exactly, but rather I was trying to hold their friendship to my own standards, without any regard as to what their standards for what constituted a friend were. And I wrote the fanfic above to try to get my feelings out, to try to make a little bit more sense of them, with one of my favorite pairings. I usually write fanfic to cope or relax from a bad anxiety attack, and Luxembourg and Portugal just seemed to fit for this. And even though in this fanfic they are in a light relationship and the problem I was facing was with only friends, the same sentiment applies. 
> 
> I wrote this almost a month and a half ago, and it has been sitting in my files since. On a 2 am whim, I felt like I was finally ready to let go of it, to put it out there. To admit that I wasn't okay for the longest time, but I got better, and my relationship is slowly improving with my friends. To admit that I was the selfish one, I was not necessarily toxic but it certainly wasn't a healthy friendship that I was causing, but I'm better now. I'm better because I got help, took a step back, wrote this fic, reviewed it, and finally took a deep breath and realized that I needed to chill the fuck out and see things from a different perspective.
> 
> This isn't an end all be all, my friends are wonderful people whom I adore with all of my heart, and sometimes there will be toxic people who make you doubt their trust and friendship. But honestly, after everything my friends dealt with, with how they still are there for me and helped me get through probably one of the lowest points of my life, how they forgave me for accusing them over and over that they didn't truly like me, I can say with utmost confidence that they are very dear friends to me. And it has made me rethink my definition on friendship too. Just because someone does not talk to you every day, or every week, it does not necessarily mean that you aren't friends. It doesn't necessarily mean they hate you and are ignoring you. 
> 
> I am not saying that it automatically goes away forever the moment you reach clarity. My anxiety and depression are still there, I still have days that I doubt. They're lessened now because meds worked for me, but it may not be a solution that will work for everyone. But a good place to start is to look at it with a different definition of friendship. You may find that they care about you much more than you could ever realize.


End file.
